I have put in a request to google legal to have a seperate TOS for there "Open" forums, that defines all property posted on site by owners of said property is then public domain, and protected under Creative Commons

_________________Let not the bindings of society hold you back from improving it.... the masses follow where the bold explore.

That's legally impossible. By definition, public domain means anyone can do anything with it, and it's not in any way protected from anything. Creative Commons does provide an easy way to disclaim the copyright on something that you own it for and put it into the public domain, but if you want some form of protection or restrictions for your work and use CC, then you'll have to keep the copyright (thus not putting it in the public domain) and choose or make a licence to publish your work under.

Also, it is not true that Google becomes the owner of anything you upload to their services. Their Terms of Service explicitly state

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Some of our Services allow you to submit content. You retain ownership of any intellectual property rights that you hold in that content. In short, what belongs to you stays yours.

When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content. The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones.

That is quite reasonable, as Google usually are.

(Just to be sure: the only Google service I use regularly is Maps, and occasionally Search. I block Ads and Analytics, because I don't like having my behaviour on the web recorded by anyone, even if Google seems benign enough. I'm not affiliated with Google in any way.)

_________________Say, can you feel the thunder in the air? Just like the moment ’fore it hits – then it’s everywhereWhat is this spell we’re under, do you care? The might to rise above it is now within your sphereMachinae Supremacy – Sid Icarus

Yes, Google is tighter with the USG and it's agencies than most people are aware of.

Lourens wrote:

Also, it is not true that Google becomes the owner of anything you upload to their services. Their Terms of Service explicitly state:

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When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works , communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content.

One of the peculiarities of the legal system and it's documents is that each sentence is taken as a complete and singular statement or claim. Which is why "legalese" seems often so wordy and cumbersome to the lay person. Please re-read the above section of the Google TOS. Now combine that with the power of an organization with billions of dollars of net worth and all the legal firepower it can buy.

Well, yes, there are some serious problems with the legal and political systems in the US, and it's always difficult to fight a big corporation in court and win. But your original statement wasn't about anyone's chances in court or Google's willingness to throw their legal weight around. You said that anything you post on Google services becomes their property. That is demonstrably false, the TOS state exactly the opposite. They get a broad license to your work, which they need to operate the service that you're using (for free I might add). But you retain your ownership, and anybody else who wants a licence must go through you, not through Google, as there is no provision for sublicencing.

Furthermore, you can't win arguments by conveniently ignoring whatever doesn't suit your point. That second sentence is still there, and it constrains the entire license to particular kinds of use. It's not a very strong constraint, as Google can pretty much dub anything they do one of their "Services", and if you're developing self-driving cars and put your secret design documents up on Google Docs, then under this licence they could use your design in their product. If you don't like that, put your documents elsewhere or pay for a private Google Docs (which presumably has different terms, I didn't check).

As for the FBI/NSA, Google as a US company have to keep to US law (and laws of other countries in which they operate), and that law sometimes requires them to hand over information. They're one of the few companies that publicly document such requests to the extent that they're allowed (the infamous National Security Letters).

_________________Say, can you feel the thunder in the air? Just like the moment ’fore it hits – then it’s everywhereWhat is this spell we’re under, do you care? The might to rise above it is now within your sphereMachinae Supremacy – Sid Icarus

each cube would take a lot of engineering, and some would need to be vacuum grown, some could be printed, some could be CNC machined by VERY tiny machines ,

so some cubes could be micro processors, some could be memory, a 100*100 pixel screen, a micro section of GPU, some could be an "I" wire some could be a "T" and 3 dimensional structures, as well as some that are a heat conducting wire in the same varieties,

imagine printing a phone

now imagine that an upgrade comes out, so you download the blueprint, "digest" the phone (dissolve the adhesives) sort the cubes back into sub-types, add cubes or remove cubes etc, print again, a new better phone,

AND NOT ONE BIT OF RARE METAL is lost......

_________________Let not the bindings of society hold you back from improving it.... the masses follow where the bold explore.

You said that anything you post on Google services becomes their property. That is demonstrably false,

Hmmmm... If by using Google services you give Google rights to your work, then yes, it really does effectively become their property. It doesn't matter that you also retain rights and ownership to it. The cat is out of the bag, or rather, Google gets its own copy of your cat and its bag.

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Furthermore, you can't win arguments by conveniently ignoring whatever doesn't suit your point. That second sentence is still there, and it constrains the entire license to particular kinds of use.

I'm not ignoring it, I'm telling you that it is practically irrelevant unless you goal is to give your content away in exchange for the pittance Google decides to share with you.

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It's not a very strong constraint, as Google can pretty much dub anything they do one of their "Services", and if you're developing self-driving cars and put your secret design documents up on Google Docs, then under this licence they could use your design in their product.

Then why are you arguing with me?

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If you don't like that, put your documents elsewhere or pay for a private Google Docs (which presumably has different terms, I didn't check).

Which is why I brought it up here. Sigma needs to consider how "open" he wants his ideas and projects.

I'm arguing because you're accusing Google of doing something that they're not, something which would be rather unreasonable for them to do. They're not getting ownership, they're getting a non-transferable licence in exchange for free hosting.

Yes, since ideas cannot be protected by law other than by keeping them (trade) secret, you have to consider carefully before you make them public, I fully agree. But that has nothing to do with Google's TOS.

What Sigma has is a big pile of ideas. Ideas are cheap, anyone can make them. Having ideas that work, and that are detailed enough to actually describe a working product, with some experimental data and perhaps a prototype that shows that it really dos work in practice as well, is where the money's at. When he gets to that point, it's worth thinking about commercialisation. But I don't think he's anywhere near that point, so I don't see the harm in sharing right now.

_________________Say, can you feel the thunder in the air? Just like the moment ’fore it hits – then it’s everywhereWhat is this spell we’re under, do you care? The might to rise above it is now within your sphereMachinae Supremacy – Sid Icarus

I'm arguing because you're accusing Google of doing something that they're not, something which would be rather unreasonable for them to do.

Do you have a seat on the Google board of directors?

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What Sigma has is a big pile of ideas. Ideas are cheap, anyone can make them. Having ideas that work, and that are detailed enough to actually describe a working product, with some experimental data and perhaps a prototype that shows that it really dos work in practice as well, is where the money's at. When he gets to that point, it's worth thinking about commercialisation. But I don't think he's anywhere near that point, so I don't see the harm in sharing right now.

There are a legion of obscure inventors, the fruit of their ideas, reduced to practice or not, having gone to others who could recognize the value of it and had the resources to exploit it first. Google, and several other sites I can think of, are titanic spider webs for ideas that all get dutifully uploaded and categorized by their submitters.

Ad-hoc mesh network of cell phones, there's a good idea. Greg Egan wrote about one in his 2010 book "Zendegi", which I happen to be reading currently. Also the OLPC computers have done mesh networking for years, and the concept goes back to people passing news from one to another, which they've been doing for millennia. It's an awesome idea, but it's also obvious, and therefore by itself worthless. What is valuable is a protocol standard and a working implementation of it, which OLPC has.

Like I said, I'm not affiliated with Google in any way. It just bothers me that they're often characterised as just as evil as Facebook, Microsoft and Apple, while in my opinion they're not.

_________________Say, can you feel the thunder in the air? Just like the moment ’fore it hits – then it’s everywhereWhat is this spell we’re under, do you care? The might to rise above it is now within your sphereMachinae Supremacy – Sid Icarus